Raed Samara, PhD is a Global Product Manager for NGS technologies at QIAGEN, with a focus on pre-analytics and targeted enrichment. Prior to joining QIAGEN, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute conducting research in the field of cancer immunology with emphasis on identifying strategies to boost the efficacy of cancer vaccines. He received his Ph.D. degree from Georgetown University in tumor biology.

Abstract:

Success of the personalized medicine strategy depends on our ability to access the genetic variance landscape continuously before, during and after treatment. Liquid biopsies provide us an easy and less intrusive way to monitor disease status. The key challenge is the sensitivity and specificity of assays used to detect genetic variances in such small samples. Recent advances in NGS have made it the ideal approach for the comprehensive analysis of the mutational landscape of samples. Specifically, the ability to enrich certain genomic targets known, or suspected, to harbor driver mutations prior to NGS is allowing researchers to achieve very deep levels of sequencing coverage, levels that cannot be achieved by either WGA or WES, thereby increasing the sensitivity of NGS assays. The ability to enrich genomic targets has also facilitated the use of liquid biopsies for the discovery of mutations that contribute to drug resistance. Several challenges remain though, mainly the specificity and uniformity of target enrichment approaches, the amount of required DNA, and the turnaround time needed to go from sample to insight. Attend this seminar to learn what solutions QIAGEN scientists have developed to overcome these challenges and how these solutions can be used to analyze mutations in a wide range of samples such as FFPE, cfDNA, and CTCs, thereby enabling researchers to use solid and liquid biopsies to continuously monitor the disease status.